California’s recently signed immunization law, requiring all incoming students in school or daycare to be vaccinated — with no opportunity for religious or personal belief exemptions — is now among the strictest such laws in the United States. As Canadian students return to the classroom this fall, California’s new legislation has managed to shine a spotlight on Canada’s own surprisingly lax attitudes and regulations toward childhood vaccination.

Only two provinces, Ontario and New Brunswick, require students to be vaccinated before attending school. Even then, both provinces also offer generous religious and so-called “philosophical” exemptions to parents who would prefer that their children not be immunized. Ontario is looking to enact even more stringent requirements, proposing that parents who exercise the philosophical exemption must first complete an educational course led by a public health representative. However, this law is far from a done deal, as it continues to wind its way through the provincial legislature.

While vaccination rates are indeed reasonably high across much of the country, with nearly nine in ten Canadian children vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, a recent Angus Reid survey revealed that attitudes about the efficacy and need for childhood vaccinations remain stubbornly negative in several provinces.

The Numbers

On its face, the Angus Reid survey reveals that Canadians generally recognize the benefits of vaccines both to their own children, and to the population at large. 88% of respondents say that vaccines are effective in preventing diseases for an individual, and 86% view vaccines as effectively preventing diseases in the community as a whole.

But digging deeper, we see that certain regions of the country, particularly Quebec, view vaccines much more skeptically than in the rest of the country. While over half of Canadians view vaccines as being “very effective” at preventing disease in an individual, only 29% of those in Quebec feel the same way; in fact, 24% of Quebecers view vaccines as being “not very effective” or “not effective at all”, double the skepticism rate of any other province.

A similar pattern emerges when people are asked about how vaccines improve health in the community as a whole, a key motivating factor in legislation like that in California, which explicitly exempts students who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons (and who may be most vulnerable to the disease in the case of an outbreak). A surprising 29% of Quebecers do not view vaccines as an effective way to reduce disease in the community, nearly triple the skepticism rate of any other province.

Quebecers’ negative attitudes about the effectiveness of vaccines translates directly into their views about whether vaccines should be mandatory for children in daycare or school. While 63% of Canadians overall think that vaccines should be mandatory for children in school, fewer than half of Quebecers feel the same way.

Why the skepticism?

A surprising number of Canadians feel that the science on vaccinations isn’t quite clear (39% total). Respondents in Quebec (48%) and Manitoba (47%) are the most skeptical about the science. Interestingly, skepticism is also negatively correlated with education level: only 27% of university-educated Canadians are leery of the science, while 48% of Canadians with a high school education or less express doubt.

Finally, it seems that those who don’t believe in the science are similarly wary of potential side effects. Over 1 in 3 Quebecers fear serious side effects from vaccinations, followed closely by Manitobans.

So why the skepticism in these regions? The reasons can be hard to pinpoint, but fear stemming from Andrew Wakefield’s discredited 1998 Lancet study linking vaccines to autism still persist in areas, and cultural inertia can be hard to overcome. Given how many adults in Canada, and in particular Quebec, are wary of both the science and the potential side effects, provincial legislatures will no doubt hesitate before enacting stricter rules. As these attitudes persist, we can expect further outbreaks of preventable diseases like the measles, which infected hundreds of Canadians in the most recent large outbreak in 2015.

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As part of Canada’s upcoming 150th birthday celebrations, Parks Canada announced free admission to all of the country’s national parks and historic sites throughout 2017. As anyone who’s visited Banff or Jasper during peak season knows all too well, the crowds of eager tourists exploring the Rockies’ splendour grows more intimidating each year. The prospect of managing 2017’s anticipated hordes of visitors to these national gems is therefore worrying, particularly for those at the helm of Parks Canada.

But in reality, most national parks in Canada remain severely underutilized, whether due to their remoteness — like the Northwest Territory’s Aulavik National Park, 600 km north of the Arctic Circle — or simple low-key obscurity, like the New Brunswick camper’s paradise of Kouchibouguac.

Only a handful of Canada’s most well-known national parks and marine reserves have the kind of overwhelming attendance numbers that keep park rangers up at night. Banff, with over three million visitors per year, is both Canada’s oldest national park (established in 1885), and its most popular, containing gems like Lake Louise and the Cave and Basin thermal springs. Just to the north, along the Canadian Rockies, lies Jasper National Park, which attracts approximately two million visitors per year to sites like the Columbia Icefield glaciers and Pyramid Mountain. Lest these parks are too overrun, fear not: just to the west is Yoho National Park, while further south is Kootenay National Park, each equally spectacular to their more famous Rocky Mountain neighbors.

On the other end of the spectrum are Canada’s most sparsely attended national parks, which quite predictably are located in some of the country’s harshest and most remote environments. Sirmilik, on the northern tip of Nunavut’s Baffin Island, and Quttinirpaaq, hundreds of kilometres to the north on Ellesmere Island, register just a few dozen hearty visitors per year to their mostly barren polar landscapes. Tuktut Nogait National Park, at the northern end of Northwest Territories, typically welcomes fewer than 10 brave souls, though those who do visit may witness the spectacular herds of Bluenose West caribou migrating to their calving grounds within the park.

Top 20 Historic Sites by Annual Average Attendance

Besides the giant expanses of the country’s national parks, Parks Canada also maintains an extensive network of national historic sites, which include everything from forts and mines, to trails, canals and historic houses. The most popular among them is Quebec City’s walled fortifications, attracting 1.5 million visits per year. Other well-attended sites include Halifax’s historic Citadel (500,000 visitors/year), Ottawa’s winter-skating paradise Rideau Canal (approx. 900,000 visitors/year), British Columbia’s breathtaking Rogers Pass (over 400,000 visitors/year) and Prince Edward Island’s literary landmark the Green Gables House (over 100,000 visitors/year).

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When asked for the names of the best Canadian authors, names such as Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro, Booker Prize winner Joseph Boyden and Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Margaret Atwood come to mind. Popular “best of” lists like those of the CBC and the Literary Review of Canada are similarly packed with classic and important works like Mordechai Richler’s Barney’s Version, Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Timothy Findley’s The Wars. But are these the Canadian books, and authors, that people actually enjoy reading the most?

Rather than ask the critics, we wanted to create a list that reflects the tastes of the reader. Similar to our previous ranking of the best Canadian movies, we set out to find what Canadian books people actually love to read. To do this, we compiled the ratings and reviews of every listed Canadian book on the most popular online reading community, Goodreads.com; we created a weighted ranking, taking into account both the book’s number of reviews and average rating. The result is a ranking that attempts to reflect the best Canadian books, as viewed by the average reader.

The top ten Canadian books are all quite different, in many ways reflecting Canada itself. Speaking to Canada’s openness and diversity, the Canadian book most beloved by Goodreads voters, A Fine Balance, is written by a first generation Canadian about struggles in his homeland. Second on the list is perhaps Canada’s most iconic book, Anne of Green Gables, representing classic Canadian culture and setting. Third is The Book of Negroes, telling the chilling tale of slavery and hardships faced by black people in our country’s early history. Rounding out the top ten are books ranging from historical dramas to dystopian fiction, catering to the entire spectrum of Canadian readers.

To little surprise, Margaret Atwood is the best represented author on our list, with five novels. Other repeat authors include Susanna Kearsley, L.M. Montgomery, Kelley Armstrong, Joseph Boyden and Guy Gavriel Kay. The two most frequently rated Canadian books on the list are Life of Pi and Water For Elephants, having being read and reviewed on Goodreads over 1.3 million times each. The next most popular books are The Handmaid’s Tale, Room, and Anne of Green Gables, which have all been read and reviewed more than 600,000 times.

The books on our list span over 108 years of Canadian literature, ranging from Anne of Green Gables written in 1908, to the brand new Rebel of The Sands by Alwyn Hamilton, from 2016. The median publication year for books on our list is 2005. This result is hardly surprising; the Goodreads audience skews young, and the site was only founded in 2006, so books written before this would need to be retroactively added. However, as time progresses and society moves forward, older books are not only read less frequently, but hold less meaning to the current audience.

In total, 34 of the 50 books on our list were written by female authors. This represents a departure from other Canadian best-of lists such as the CBC’s ranking of the top 100 books, where only 50% of the works were written by female writers. The women’s literary organization VIDA argues that the majority of reviewers for prominent literary publications are male, thereby potentially biasing best sellers list and critical rankings towards books written by male authors. A competing hypothesis for this discrepancy is offered by Goodreads, based on an analysis of their own rating data: both women and men on the site tend to rate books authored by women higher than those authored by men.

Methodology

Goodreads data was gathered in April 2016. Ratings on Goodreads are assigned on a 1-5 scale, and can be submitted by anyone with an account on the site. To qualify for our list, the author must either have Canadian citizenship, or have lived much of their life in Canada.

The rankings were created using a Bayesian rating formula, the same one used by IMDB for the IMDB top 250 – and our ranking of the best Canadian movies.

adjusted rating = (v/(v+m))R+(m/(v+m))C, where

• R = average Goodreads rating for the book
• v = the number of Goodreads ratings that the book received
• m = parameter that effectively down weights books with fewer ratings (in our case m = 25000)
• C = average rating across all books on Goodreads

For books that are part of a series, we have chosen to only rank the first book. Sequels are likely to have only been read by people who enjoyed the first book, thus skewing their ratings, as all readers are already predisposed to liking the book. We also have chosen to exclude romance and erotica novels from our list for a similar reason. Goodreads has a very large and dedicated audience of erotica and romance readers. Similar to sequels, books in these genres are often avoided by most other readers, and consequently, receive an inflated Goodreads rating.

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With the sad news that Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie is suffering from terminal brain cancer and embarking on his final tour, poignant tributes referring to the Kingston rockers as “Canada’s Band” are now a common sight.

The Hip’s legacy of quintessential Canadiana is second-to-none — their songs are peppered with wistful references to sleepy towns like Bobcaygeon and Thompson, and unforgettable stories like those of David Milgaard and Bill Barilko. But besides being known for a catalogue that is thoroughly steeped in the culture of this nation, does The Hip deserve a place among the pantheon of great Canadian musical acts? Has their music truly captured the attention of a broad swath of the Canadian public? After digging into historical Canadian album charts, and considering metrics like weeks at #1, longevity, and breadth of album success, the answer could not be more clear: The Tragically Hip are without a doubt Canada’s most successful and well-loved band of the past 50 years.

Weeks at the Top

For this analysis, we looked at Billboard’s top Canadian album charts, which are published weekly and go back to 1968. These charts measure the top selling albums in Canada — including all artists, not just Canadian ones — and include sales of physical albums, digital downloads, and more recently have started to include streaming as well. Arguably album sales is one of the most comprehensive and meaningful metrics of an artist’s popularity, as it suggests a full appreciation of an artist’s work by the listener.

The first bona fide bands to make the list are The Hip and Nickelback, each enjoying 17 weeks at #1 on the Canadian charts over their careers (they are joined at 17 weeks by solo rocker Bryan Adams). After these two, it’s a steep drop before any Canadian band ranks again; The Hip and Nickelback have been the only groups to enjoy the kind of commercial success it takes to consistently top the charts. The Barenaked Ladies check in at 8 weeks (due exclusively to their debut 1992 album Gordon), and remarkably, no other band, including stalwart rockers like Rush and The Guess Who, even cracks five weeks.

Though we’re most interested in identifying the most important bands in Canadian music, it’s worth noting the success of several solo artists when it comes to album sales. The undisputed queen of the Canadian charts is Celine Dion, whose multitude of top-selling albums — which span the gamut from original material to covers to greatest hits compilations, in both English and French — have spent a remarkable 39 weeks at #1. Solo pop stars Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain follow next with 23 and 21 weeks respectively, though their dominance at the top of the charts is due primarily to the success of a singular, career-defining album (Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill dominated for a ridiculous 22 weeks in the mid-90s, while Twain’s country-pop Up! spent almost three months at #1 in the early 2000s).

Breadth

Counting the weeks at #1 is useful, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, particularly since just one or two hit albums can make an artist’s numbers look gaudy. So we next considered the number of an artist’s albums that reached the top of the charts.

Again, nobody holds a candle to Celine Dion. She can sing from the phone book and it’ll probably go #1. But it’s arguably a much more impressive achievement for a rock band like the Hip to have topped the charts with an astounding nine albums (four more than any other band). Starting with their second album, Road Apples, which led for a single brief week in 1991, every subsequent Hip album through the 1990s spent at least a couple of weeks at #1, including classics Fully Completely (1992), Trouble at the Henhouse (1996) and Phantom Power (1998). While none of the Hip’s albums dominated sales the way that Jagged Little Pill did for Alanis Morissette, the band’s 1994 hit Day for Night did manage an impressive four weeks atop the charts. That’s really impressive, given that they were competing directly against R.E.M.’s Monster and Boyz II Men’s II, huge albums which were dominating the US charts at that time.

Longevity

Here, we consider the time between an artist’s first and last album to hit #1, which suggests how long the artist has managed to stay in the public’s consciousness. Looking at the data in this way, we notice some remarkable outliers. Neil Young has had precisely two #1 albums in Canada: the 1971 masterpiece Harvest and 2007’s Live at Massey Hall 1971. You’ll notice that the latter album was released 36 years after it was recorded, which somewhat negates the argument for Neil Young’s creative longevity. Nevertheless, it is a testament to Canada’s love for the political rocker that his classic performances still sell almost four decades after being first performed. Ageless rockers Rush have also had exactly two #1 albums in Canada, Signals and Clockwork Angels, separated by a chasm of 30 years. The Tragically Hip, on the other hand, boast a chart-topping longevity of 18 years, and more importantly have densely filled that time with nine hit albums (their forthcoming record Man Machine Poem will likely extend these gaudy numbers).

No Band Touches The Hip in Canada

When considering all of these key metrics together — chart dominance, album breadth, longevity — it’s clear that no other Canadian band even comes close. Bands like Nickelback, Rush and Arcade Fire have been quite successful within the country, and have in some cases achieved great success outside of it. But no matter how you slice the data, The Tragically Hip are Canada’s most vital and well-loved band.

Methodology

Data is drawn from the Billboard Top Canadian Albums chart, published weekly since 1968. Data is accurate as of 6/15/2016. You may be wondering about where Drake is. As of the publication date, Drake has led the Canadian charts for a total of 10 weeks across six separate albums, and will likely rise sharply in the rankings over the coming years.

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Cory Joseph was born in Toronto, and after a stop in San Antonio at the beginning of his career, he has returned to his hometown where he plays for the Toronto Raptors. Although he is a role player on the team, he has been an integral part of the Raptors’ success over the past two seasons. Joseph currently wears the Nike Kyrie 2, the signature shoe of Kyrie Irving. His teammate, Giannis Antetokounmpo, wears the Nike Kobe AD.

Andrew Wiggins is only 21 years old but he is making a large impact in his 3rd year in the league with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Averaging over 22 points per game to go along with 4 rebounds and 2 assists, Wiggins is set to have a long career in the NBA. He currently wears the Adidas Crazy Explosive, an unusual shoe that looks like a wrestling boot.

Tyler Ennis spent only one year in college at Syracuse before making the leap to the NBA in 2014. He currently is average about 6 minutes per game with the Houston Rockets and is looking to improve on a slow start to the 2016-17 season. Ennis wears the Jordan Melo M13, Carmelo Anthony’s signature shoe.

Trey Lyles was selected with the 12th overall pick by the Utah Jazz two years ago and averaged over 17 minutes per game in his first season. He is the first person from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to play in the NBA. Lyles typically wears shoes from the Kobe line and most often sports the Nike Kobe 3.

Jamal Murray, the talented young Canadian from Kitchener, Ontario, is in his first year in the league after spending only a single year at Kentucky. The highly touted rookie signed a multi-year deal with Adidas before the draft. He is currently wearing the Adidas D Lillard 2, the second signature shoe in Damian Lillard’s line.

A former All-American with Gonzaga, Toronto-born Kelly Olynyk has asserted himself as a consistent backup centre for the Boston Celtics after undergoing shoulder surgery in the offseason. He has been a reliable member of Canada’s national basketball team over his career, and is a big reason why Team Canada came ever-so-close to qualifying for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Olynyk is currently wearing Nike Kobe 11 shoes.

Dwight Powell, a role player out of Stanford, has seen his minutes per game double over the past two seasons. From Toronto, Ontario, the 6’11” centre has improved each of his three seasons in the league. Powell frequently wears the Nike Zoom Lebron Soldier 8, an older version of one of Lebron James’ secondary shoes.

Nik Stauskas, a former 8th overall pick, has played an important role in the success of the suddenly resurgent Philadelphia 76ers. He represented Canada at the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship but did not play in the team’s final game due to food poisoning. Stauskas wears the popular Nike Hypershift.

Tristan Thompson won his first NBA Championship last season alongside teammates Lebron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. The former 4th overall pick, is known for his defensive abilities. He currently wears the Nike Zoom Lebron Soldier X.

Journeyman Joel Anthony, a native of Montreal, is a newly minted teammate of superstar Kawhi Leonard after signing with the San Antonio Spurs for the remainder of the 2016-17 season. He’s been a Nike and Jordan brand wearer his entire career, most recently sporting Nike Air Max Hyperposite shoes.

The Players and Their Shoes

With ERs in cities across the country facing unacceptably high wait times, we were curious what sorts of visits are causing all of the congestion in these critical facilities. Is the rise in concussions and brain injuries among children to blame for the overcrowding, or are simple cuts and scratches unnecessarily packing ERs with many folks who could otherwise be treated at home?

We turned to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which classifies injury and trauma ER visits (though not visits for infectious ailments like the flu) to emergency rooms across the country, to help us understand. As we’ve noted in past studies on the state of healthcare in Canada, data collection in this country is extremely uneven, and typically missing for vast swaths of the population, including entire regions and even provinces. There was no difference this time around. Fortunately, the country’s most populous province, Ontario, maintains excellent data reporting for injury and trauma visits across its entire network of emergency rooms, so we focus here exclusively on Ontario’s statistics.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, falls comprise the largest single cause of injury and trauma ER visits across Ontario hospitals (over 200,000 in a year). This broad category includes injuries due to falls suffered on the ice and snow, on the playground, or from beds, chairs and other areas of the home.

The second largest category, comprising another 200,000 annual ER visits in Ontario, involves injuries due to being struck by objects — typically in the context of sports activities or contact with broken glass and other household accidents — or being struck by people — again, typically in the context of sports activities. Finally, another large chunk of visits (116,000) comes from overexertion, which includes injuries due to heavy lifting or other strenuous physical activity.

While such injuries can indeed be serious, hospital admission rates due to these largest categories are relatively modest, at well under 10%. Several other types of visits, which each contributed only a few hundred ER visits in Ontario, resulted in much more serious rates of admission: suffocation (44%), injuries to motorcycle passengers (26%), drowning (20%) and injuries to motorcycle drivers (18%).

Finally, a few particularly notable categories also stand out. Injuries resulting from legal intervention resulted in over 700 annual visits to Ontario ERs; these are injuries inflicted by police or other law enforcement in the course of arrests, maintaining order or other legal actions.

Another 485 annual visits were due to the unintentional discharge of firearms, 15% of which were serious enough to warrant hospital admission.

Methodology

The CIHI data includes only ER visits classified as being an injury or trauma in this analysis, covering the time period April 1 2013 through March 31 2014. While the CIHI does collect some data for several provinces, only the data for Alberta and Ontario include all emergency facilities within those provinces; for simplicity, we’ve chosen to present data only for Ontario. We note that there is no reason a priori to suggest that the trends across the entire country should be meaningfully different than those in Ontario. This document provides details on the classification definitions used by the CIHI.

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We all have to pay taxes, but some of us pay more than others. While those who make more money typically pay higher taxes, your gross income is not the only factor that determines how much you fork over to the Canada Revenue Agency (or Revenue Quebec). Among other factors, your tax rate is also determined by the province you called home on December 31.

To illustrate the point, we created an interactive mapchart that compares take home income for a given taxable income in all 13 provinces and territories. Clicking a province will reveal detailed information about the given income and province.

The reason for the different tax rates are quite varied. British Columbia, New Brunswick and Alberta all recently experienced notable tax regime changes that can shed some light on what’s happening behind the scenes.

Both British Columbia’s top tax rate of 16.8 percent and New Brunswick’s 35.75 rate were dropped in 2016. Whereas British Columbia’s top rate was eliminated because the law that enacted it was a temporary measure that simply expired, New Brunswick’s top rate was scrapped in response to the federal government’s top rate increase of three percent — a consequence that is sure to follow in other provinces, economists warn.

Alberta has undergone incredible financial undulation recently, having just last summer replaced its long-serving Conservative government with an NDP one, while experiencing an unrelenting slump in oil prices. Due to this fossil fuel slump and its direct effect on the economy, Alberta will be receiving equalization payments again, kicking Ontario out of the sixth have-not province seat.  

Historically, Alberta has had a flat 10 percent provincial tax rate, but since the NDP took office last year, that top-tier rate increased over 30 percent to 15 percent for the 2016 tax year. Combined, that’s a nine percent increase on income taxes for Albertans making over $300,000.

Liberals Change The Rules

The new Liberal government under Justin Trudeau made a few notable changes to the federal income tax regime in 2016, namely a highly publicized rate reduction to the middle class tax bracket (which ranges from $45,282 to $90,563). The tax rate was decreased from 22 percent to 20.5 percent.

Despite Liberal campaign promises to supply the middle class with tax relief “worth up to $670 per year“, the new tax regime is middle class in name only. For this notoriously difficult to define majority, the tax burden has not changed all that much across provinces or tax years.

To give the Liberal’s middle class tax relief a little perspective, for an Ontarian to save $670 on their income taxes in 2016, they would have to gross over $80,000. That’s a far cry from the widely recognized $55,000 per annum median income. A single, middle class earner making $40,000 per year in Ontario will only see a combined tax saving of $30.

The real beneficiaries of the new Liberal tax regime are Canada’s upper middle class (who many Canadians consider rich — making up to $200,000 per year). This class takes full advantage of the newly reduced middle tax bracket, while benefiting from a stagnated upper middle bracket, effectively reducing their tax burden the most. For instance, a resident of British Columbia earning $180,000 per year will pay $1,520 less in taxes in 2016.

In an attempt at tax symmetry, a four percent rate increase for Canadians earning north of $200,000 was applied to make up for the lost revenue related to the middle class tax cut — increasing Canada’s highest tax rate from 29 percent to 33 percent.

As a result of this rate increase for Canada’s one percent — the lucky few who earn more than $200,000 — many high-income earners are now being asked to pay over 50 percent — a psychological threshold economists warn encourages tax avoidance.

For instance, high income earning Albertans are now subject to a combined nine percent increase on income taxes — a rate increase that took less than a year to pass through the provincial legislature. This means an Albertan earning $250,000 per year will owe over $4,000 more in taxes than they did in 2015. These changes are rumoured to have caused at least one high profile Albertan to leave the province and country altogether.

If you want to see how your taxes will be impacted in 2016 and how that effect would have differed had you lived in a different province, you can adjust the interactive chart below.

Methodology Notes

The tax brackets and rates used to create these charts are taken directly from the CRA’s personal tax brackets page for 2016 and from the individual province’s 428s for 2015. Surtaxes for Ontario and Prince Edward Island are included in the calculations. Non-refundable income tax credits, including low income tax reduction, are not included in any of the calculations, except for basic personal amounts and Quebec residents’ federal income tax abatement, which represents a 16.5 percent reduction in federal income taxes for both 2015 and 2016.

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